In the field of the automatic packaging machines, in particular machines for packaging pharmaceutical products into containers, to which the following description refers explicitly without losing its generality, packaging machines, or parts thereof, are often isolated with respect to the outside environment, in order to prevent the product being packaged, or the containers being filled, from contamination.
In general, if the pharmaceutical product to be packaged is dangerous for the health of operators who work near the packaging machines, it is also essential to avoid spreading of remains or parts of the product in the surrounding area.
For this purpose, specific solutions for packaging pharmaceutical products in a controlled atmosphere have been proposed.
These solutions include apparatuses aimed at providing a protected environment for packing, that is a complete isolation of the whole packaging machine and in general of the whole packaging area from the outside area, in order to avoid any type of cross contamination between the product being packaged, containers and the outside environment.
The above mentioned apparatuses usually include enclosing structures for isolating the packaging machine in environments or chambers with a controlled purity, and having systems for sterilization and decontamination, as well as complicated systems for micro filtrations of the air exchanged with the outside.
The above mentioned structures have shutters, with suitable seals, aimed at allowing the technical staff, responsible for correct operation of the working parts of the packaging machine and/or for its maintenance, to accede thereinto.
At present, since they have to maintain very high isolation standards, the above apparatuses must be very complicated and sophisticated structurally and functionally, and moreover, they are very expensive.
Moreover, since the shutters are kept air-tight only by the seals, which very often tend to wear and deform, eventually in an uncontrolled way, the best measure to isolate the above described enclosing structures from the outside environment is the frequent substitution of the seals, which results in considerable waste of time.